The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 eBook

[This is the first of the letters to Bernard Barton
(1784-1849), a clerk in a bank at Woodbridge, in Suffolk,
who was known as the Quaker poet. Lamb had met
him at a London Magazine dinner at 13 Waterloo
Place, and had apparently said something about Quakers
and poetry which Barton, on thinking it over, had
taken too seriously. Bernard Barton was already
the author of four volumes of poetry, of which Napoleon
and other Poems was the latest, published in 1822.
Lamb’s essay on “Imperfect Sympathies”
had been printed in the London Magazine for
August, 1821. For John Woolman, see note on page
93. The sonnet “Work” had been printed
in the Examiner, August 29, 1819.]

LETTER 291

CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD

Sept. 22, 1822.

My dear F.,—­I scribble hastily at office.
Frank wants my letter presently. I & sister are
just returned from Paris!! We have eaten frogs.
It has been such a treat! You know our monotonous
general Tenor. Frogs are the nicest little delicate
things—­rabbity-flavoured. Imagine
a Lilliputian rabbit! They fricassee them; but
in my mind, drest seethed, plain, with parsley and
butter, would have been the decision of Apicius.
Shelley the great Atheist has gone down by water to
eternal fire! Hunt and his young fry are left
stranded at Pisa, to be adopted by the remaining duumvir,
Lord Byron—­his wife and 6 children & their
maid. What a cargo of Jonases, if they had foundered
too! The only use I can find of friends, is that
they do to borrow money of you. Henceforth I
will consort with none but rich rogues. Paris
is a glorious picturesque old City. London looks
mean and New to it, as the town of Washington would,
seen after it. But they have no St. Paul’s
or Westminster Abbey. The Seine, so much despised
by Cockneys, is exactly the size to run thro’
a magnificent street; palaces a mile long on one side,
lofty Edinbro’ stone (O the glorious antiques!):
houses on the other. The Thames disunites London
& Southwark. I had Talma to supper with me.
He has picked up, as I believe, an authentic portrait
of Shakspere. He paid a broker about L40 English
for it. It is painted on the one half of a pair
of bellows—­a lovely picture, corresponding
with the Folio head. The bellows has old carved
wings round it, and round the visnomy is inscribed,
near as I remember, not divided into rhyme—­I
found out the rhyme—­

“Whom have we here,
Stuck on this bellows,
But the Prince of good fellows,
Willy Shakspere?”

At top—­

“O base and coward luck!
To be here stuck.—­POINS.”

At bottom—­

“Nay! rather a glorious
lot is to him assign’d,
Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind.—­PISTOL.”